Understand Your Mind. Change Your Patterns.

This is a structured, practical retreat designed to help you understand how your mind works, recognise your patterns, and learn how to work with them.

Drawing from the early teachings of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, alongside principles found in Gestalt therapy and modern psychotherapy, we explore how attention, behaviour, and conditioning shape your experience - and how to begin shifting them in a way that is realistic and sustainable.

This is not about studying philosophy in theory. It’s about learning how to apply it in your day-to-day life.

Why This Matters

Most patterns don’t come from nowhere. They were learned, often for good reason, and at some point they were useful. Over time, however, those same patterns can become limiting.

This retreat gives you a way to:

• Understand where patterns come from
• See how they continue to play out
• Begin working with them more consciously

Not by forcing change, but by developing awareness and choice.

You don’t need prior experience with yoga philosophy or therapy-based work. Everything is taught in a clear, practical way. You’re not expected to share beyond what feels comfortable, and you’re always welcome to participate in your own way. The aim is not to overwhelm you with information, but to give you something you can actually use.

From this retreat you will re-enter the world rejuvenated and ready to apply seeds of wisdom into the fullest expression of your lives. These are ancient methods for modern times.

Who This Retreat Is For

• Yoga practitioners of all levels — including complete beginners
• Yoga teachers wanting to deepen their understanding and teaching
• Mental health professionals, therapists, counsellors and social workers
• Anyone curious about how philosophy can be applied in everyday life

Relevance to Psychotherapy and Counselling Practice

This program supports psychotherapists and counsellors in developing:

• Enhanced self-awareness and reflective capacity
• Greater understanding of pattern formation and relational dynamics
• Embodied approaches to therapeutic presence
• Somatic and mindfulness-informed clinical skills
• Integration of experiential awareness into therapeutic process
• The retreat is intended to deepen practitioners’ capacity for attuned, relational, and ethically grounded psychotherapy practice.
  

Relevance to Yoga Teachers

For teachers who feel the pull to share more, but want guidance on how, here is an opportunity to come behind the scenes and explore how to build meaningful workshops of your own.

You’ll be invited into a dedicated Teacher Support Circle — a space to share challenges, ask questions, exchange ideas, and be held within a supportive, like-minded community.

Practical guidance. Real conversations. 

To secure your spot

Please deposit $600 into the following account:

CAPACITY BUILDING AU
BSB: 638-060
Account Number: 16543718

Please Reference your full name 

Cancellation Policy

$600 deposit is non-refundable.
No refunds on balance due within eight weeks of retreat.
If cancellation occurs within eight weeks of retreat you have the option to find someone to swap with you, or transfer your payment (-$600 deposit) to the next retreat.

Meet your teachers

Evelyn Bowes is a PACFA-registered psychotherapist and accredited PACFA supervisor with professional experience in psychotherapy, experiential process work, and contemplative practices. She is also a qualified yoga teacher with training in yoga philosophy, meditation, pranayama, and embodied awareness practices.

Evelyn integrates psychotherapeutic and contemplative frameworks within ethically grounded professional education contexts.

Darci is the founder of Australia Yoga Teacher Training, a well known and established yoga school that traings and mentors yoga teachers in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Northern Rivers and online. Darci is also currently in her third year of a Masters degree in Gestalt therapy: a relational, present-focused approach to psychotherapy that explores how patterns form through past experience and continue to shape behaviour, perception, and responses in the present. 

What brought Evie and Darci together was a shared approach: using yoga not just as a physical practice, but as a way to understand patterns, behaviour, and the way we relate to ourselves and others.

Their work is shaped by both traditional teachings, including the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches.

Together, they bring a combined approach that is both structured, experiential and trauma informed. Their retreats are designed to help participants  become aware of patterns, how they are formed, how they are maintained, and how they can begin to shift—using tools drawn from yoga, mindfulness, and psychotherapy-informed frameworks.

Their work is less about teaching concepts, and more about creating the conditions for people to observe, understand, and work with their own experience in a way that is grounded and sustainable.